From Our Pastor: 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This weekend’s readings are beautiful and challenging. The first reading reminds us not to put our trust in people and the world, but instead to trust in God. Only in the Lord do we find our hope and our true life and life eternal. How do we live out that trust of the Lord? The beatitudes. The gospel is Luke’s version of the beatitudes, which are a beautiful way to live out the life of faith. The commandments set us free, and the beatitudes are the fulfillment of those commandments on how to live that free life. Luke’s version of the beatitudes come with warnings/woes. The woes are warnings not to live the life of the world, but instead the life of faith that leads to life eternal.

Tomorrow is St. Valentine’s Day. Interesting enough, that is actually no longer St. Valentine’s feast day in the Novus Ordo calendar. February 14 is now the feast day of Saints Cyril and Methodius in the new calendar. In the extraordinary form calendar St. Valentine is still celebrated. Ss. Cyril and Methodius were brothers who were sent as missionaries to the Slavic peoples. St. Cyril created a written alphabet so that their language could be written down and the scriptures could be translated so their people could read them. St. Cyril created the Cyrillic alphabet that is known now as named after him. St. Valentine as a feast day of love is one of those unknown realities how it came about, except somehow coming about because of Geoffrey Chaucer writing about when birds find their pairs around this time of year. There are many St. Valentines throughout the Church’s history, but most likely the St. Valentine is a blending of two St. Valentines. The most likely St. Valentine was a priest and physician in Rome who died a martyr being clubbed and beheaded around the year 270 AD. On this feast of Ss. Cyril and Methodius or St. Valentine, remember that all three of these saints lived lives of holiness focused on love of the Lord which helped them love others so well in their lives. This feast day, I pray you experience the abundance of the Lord’s love and share it with your spouses, your families, your friends, and in our parish community.

Thank you for such a successful event in thanking and saying goodbye to the Franciscans who have given us so much these last 160 years. We continue their legacy here at St. Francis Solanus now and into the future. We stand on this legacy and look forward to growing as disciples of Christ in the model of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis Solanus, St. Valentine, Ss. Cyril and Methodius, and so many more that we can become the saints of the future that inspire others to come to know Christ through our love, our missionary work, and discipleship. May this feast of love inspire us to love as God calls us to in the beatitudes today.

-Rev. Steven Arisman